


The Game's Afoot: Five Games Alice Introduced Turtle To

by kinetikatrue



Category: Westing Game - Ellen Raskin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 17:02:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinetikatrue/pseuds/kinetikatrue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Myst, Magic, Go, geocaching, Apples to Apples - Turtle and Alice through the years in five games.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Game's Afoot: Five Games Alice Introduced Turtle To

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galaxysoup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxysoup/gifts).



1\. Myst (April 1995)

The Saturday after Alice’s ninth birthday, she gets dropped off at Turtle’s house same as usual, hair in its single braid and backpack on her shoulders. But before they can start a new game of chess, Alice asks, “Can we play something different today?”

Turtle suggests, “After we play one game?” Their average game time is about half an hour; they’ll still have plenty of time for whatever Alice wants to play afterwards.

Alice thinks about that for a moment, but she’s a pretty logical kid – and she clearly hasn’t become bored with chess - so it doesn’t take her long to agree to a game. Twenty minutes later, they’re done, and they’ve even mostly maintained their usual standard of play. Alice going for her backpack immediately isn’t unexpected.

Her pulling out _Myst_ is, though. 

Turtle has only ever vaguely heard of _Myst_. She thinks she remembers Alice unwrapping it at the party, saying thank you, setting it aside to examine more closely later. And up to this point, the games Alice and Turtle have played have all been familiar ones (chess, of course, but also Monopoly and Scrabble and cards and a million others). Now there’s this unknown computer game. 

Turtle isn’t allowed more than a moment to consider just how quickly Alice is growing up, though, because Alice is asking, “Can we play it?”

And even if Alice hadn’t looked as excited to try the game out as she does, Turtle would have said yes. If there had been real computer games when Turtle was nine, she would’ve been excited, too. Heck, she’s excited to try this one with Alice, now.

When she says, “We can use my computer,” she has no idea what she’s getting into.

Four hours later, she finds herself calling Angela and asking to keep Alice overnight. Two hours after that, she’s dripping grease from her lo mein onto the pages and pages of notes they’ve made. She doesn’t really notice it getting dark until Theo wanders in from his writers’ group and finds them camped out in front of the computer, determined to solve just one more puzzle.

Well, really, to solve the game.

Even though it suddenly feels way more creepy, now that she’s realized they’re playing it late at night. But she’s a responsible adult, the primary counsel for a multimillion-dollar corporation – and Angela would kill her if she knew Turtle had let Alice stay up too, too late.

It takes all the willpower she possesses to tell Alice that it’s time for bed, save the game and go to sleep.

And she’s not even a little surprised when she meets Alice in the kitchen, just past sunrise, ready to power through to the end. Fortified by PopTarts and hot chocolate, they finish in time for Alice to get dressed properly and eat a grilled-cheese sandwich before her ride home arrives.

As they’re hugging goodbye, Alice asks, “We can do that again, right?”

Turtle nods – she’s willing to learn a lot more about computer games in order to have that kind of experience again.

 

2\. Magic: the Gathering (February 1998)

The Alice who comes for Saturday afternoon chess and computer games these days has short hair and wears baggy painters’ pants and skate sneakers, but still makes straight As. Turtle finds it bittersweet: sad that the braid’s gone, yet glad that Alice’s choice to chop it off was a happy one. Anyway, she’s a little more used to the idea that Alice is really growing up, now.

When Alice pulls two overlarge packs of cards out of her back-pack one Saturday in February, Turtle isn’t expecting anything too out of the ordinary – card games of all sorts are a normal part of their repertoire, though they only ever gamble for M&Ms. Alice having a card game to teach her isn’t even all that strange.

She raises an eyebrow when she gets a better look at the boxes, though. “Magic, huh?”

Alice shoots right back, nearly sassy, “It’s a strategy card game – and you’ve always secretly wanted to be a wizard, right?”

But Turtle just says, “I _am_ a wizard. Of the law.” She was getting sassy long before Alice was even around to consider the idea.

Alice rolls her eyes, “Whatever. You can still try something new.”

And, well, yes, Turtle generally likes trying new things, so she opens the cellophane-wrapped card deck, takes out the cards it contains and prepares to start shuffling them. Her eyes catch on the art while she’s cutting the deck, though – and, well, she’s not super into fantasy art as a genre, but even she can admit that this is decent stuff, atmospheric and evocative, really making you feel the alien-ness of the setting.

She tunes back in part-way through Alice’s explanation of game-play: how lands provide you with mana and mana powers your spells and you use your spells to reduce your opponent’s life points, but mostly she’s going to have to explain cards to Turtle as they go.

Turtle grins, feral, “Well, what’re we waiting for, then?” She’s betting she won’t need nearly as much explained as Alice thinks.

She’s half-right – the cards mostly seem self-explanatory – and half wrong, because Alice beats her in only a dozen turns. Their second game takes longer, though Alice still wins handily. Their third nearly goes to Turtle.

Turtle gets so wrapped up in upping her win percentage, she forgets about chess entirely, but it pays off; by the time Angela comes to pick Alice up at the end of the afternoon, Turtle’s winning about half the time.

By the next weekend, Turtle has gone out and found a store that sells Magic decks, bought a few cartons of booster packs, disassembled their contents and analyzed their usefulness – and figured she’s gotten a better handle on strategy as a result. The deck she puts together afterward isn’t exactly standard-issue. 

When Alice shows up, ready to play, she says, “I picked up a few more cards - if you want to look through them and see if there’s anything you want to add to your deck, feel free.” Turtle likes it best when the outcome of a game is determined by her opponent’s skills rather than their equipment.

 

3\. Go (December 2001)

They’re in the University Ave Borders because the State Street bookstores didn’t contain anything Alice thought her dad would _really_ like. Angela loves stuff from A Room of Her Own, but as far as Turtle knows, the most radical thing Denton Deere has ever done is decide he still wanted to marry the college- and med school-educated version of Angela. And Alice is apparently tired of giving him ties.

Turtle doesn’t mind; she likes bookstores in general - and ones that want to serve her coffee in particular.

By the time she’s exhausted the charms of a peppermint mocha and a trashy legal thriller, she figures Alice ought to have either found something to give her dad or given up on finding it today. She’s not to be found in any of the non-fiction sections, though – or up at the front of the store; when Turtle does track her down, it’s in science fiction and fantasy, staring at the shelf in front of her sadly.

Turtle says, “I didn’t think your dad was into the whole …elves and magic and starships thing.”

Alice rolls her eyes, “He’s not – I found him a book of essays about all those places him and mom keep talking about going-“

Turtle laughs, “And then never do. They really should actually take a vacation by themselves one of these days.”

Alice says, rueful, “You’re telling me. But this, this is just what I do every time I’m in a bookstore with a manga section: look to see if they somehow magically have a translation of Hikaru No Go for sale, that none of the fansites heard about ahead of time.”

Turtle isn’t a complete mundane – she may practice corporate law, but her roommate in undergrad turned her on to classic Trek and she likes the occasional tale of magic and the supernatural, but, still, “…what-the-who No Go?”

“Hikaru,” Alice repeats. “It’s a manga about this kid who plays this game, Go, and the spirit of an old Go master who’s, like, haunting him. It’s _really_ good.”

Oh, another manga – Turtle guesses it must be new, since Alice hasn’t talked about it over chess and Magic, yet. “I thought you said it wasn’t translated, yet.”

Alice grins, sly, “It isn’t, not officially, but you can find unofficial translations – scanlations – on the internet, if you know where to look.”

Bootlegging – well, Turtle’s pretty sure there’s some of that somewhere back up the family tree, too. She says, “But you want copies you can hold in your hands – just not badly enough to learn Japanese over.”

Alice shakes her head, firm in her answer. “Nope – it just makes me want to learn to play Go. It’s supposed to be great for your mental prowess.”

All Turtle says is, “Of course it is.” And, “ready to go?”

But inside she’s grinning, because, well, Turtle and Alice have gone Christmas shopping together ever since Alice was old enough to understand that giving people presents was something she could join in on – and every year, Turtle uses the expedition as a chance to figure out what Alice would like best for Christmas. She’s finally found her answer for this year: she’s headed for the local gaming store to buy the best Go set they can sell her.

The look on Alice’s face when she unwraps it is fantastic – but spending Christmas afternoon fumbling their way through learning how to play is even better; it really does force Turtle to use mental muscles she hadn’t even been aware she was neglecting.

 

4\. Geocaching (October 2004)

It starts with an email from Alice:

_You have a GPS; I have a list of coordinates - want to come tromping all over Dane County with me?_

And Turtle still loves a good mystery - a career in corporate law has only sharpened that appreciation – so even though she has no idea what she’s getting into, she tells Alice yes. And then packs a daypack with water and snacks and her rain jacket and GPS

Even back in middle school she knew that you could never be too prepared.

What she was preparing for turns out to be geocaching. Alice is attending the sort of college that makes all its freshmen take interdisciplinary seminars designed to teach them how to synthesize material from diverse disciplines and write sensibly about it – and the professor teaching Alice’s thinks introducing his students to geocaching will help them better understand how computers allow people to create or recreate reality. He’s assigned them the Leopold Legacy, a set of twelve caches located all around Dane County dedicated to the work of Aldo Leopold.

They’re allowed to work alone or with a partner – and even though it would probably be better for her academic career to have chosen a fellow student, Alice has turned first to Turtle.

By the time they’ve bushwhacked their way into January, Turtle can understand why – it’s the most fun she’s had outside of a chess game or a courtroom in…she’s not actually sure how long. Which, she’s absolutely certain, means _too long_. She’s grateful to whoever came up with the idea of tuning a GPS to the mathematical precision of a specific latitude and longitude where they’d hidden a prize.

She tells Alice, “It’s like going on a treasure hunt. For adults. Whoever thought it up is a genius.” 

Alice grins, “Well, here’s hoping you feel that way once we’ve done eleven more.”

And the thing is: she does. She’s drunk all her water and eaten all her snacks; she’s covered in scratches from pushing through brambles; she’s tired and messy and feeling like she could eat a horse. And she still feels like this is the most fun she can remember having in forever.

Even if Alice never wants to do this again, Turtle plans to – but she doesn’t figure that’ll be a problem, if the way Alice is smiling while calculating the last lat/long means anything.

 

5\. Apples to Apples (August 2007)

They sometimes do Saturday evenings rather than afternoons, now that Alice has adult responsibilities to take care of same as Turtle, now that Alice isn’t one of those responsibilities (not that she’s ever felt like a responsibility to Turtle, except in the best way possible). But Turtle likes their reinvented Saturdays: the casualness, the takeout, the things they talk about.

And the games Alice brings for them to play.

The first time it’s Apples to Apples, Turtle scoffs at the name, but still recruits Theo and Doug to round out the game, once it becomes clear that this is one they’ll need more than two players for. She starts warming up to it as soon as she sees the cards, though – and she’s trash-talking everybody else’s choices by the end of the first round. When Theo gets to seven points first, she demands a rematch – and by the end of the night, she’s gotten on amazon and ordered her own set. 

Plus all the expansion sets available.

Turtle ropes Chris and Shirley into playing, after that – and Angela and Denton when they have time – because she has needs, okay? And those include regular Apples to Apples death-matches. She loves that it requires people to craft the perfect argument out of a single pair of cards. And that while some of them are obvious, others are beautiful and weird and unexpected.

Others are just wrong, though - no matter what Theo says - even though, yes, the subjectivity is part of what Turtle loves about the game, as well. 

The evenings when Alice comes and brings her friends are the best, though. Because Alice shines - and even when Turtle doesn't agree with her answers, she's never bored by them and frequently learns something new as a result. Which, in Turtle's opinion, is how it should be.

It strikes her, then, that being an only child, Alice will never know what it's like to have a brilliant niece to learn from, "...unless you adopt one of your friends' kids for the purpose," as she tells Alice on her way out that night.

Alice smiles and gives her an extra hug, and Turtle hopes that she understands that Turtle means it, that she isn't just drunk and being soppy, that she's never sweet, not like that - that this is the Winkoppel modus operandi, though Alice can't know that last part because nobody but Turtle knows that last part. But she will, eventually, when Turtle figures out how to turn the family business over to her. Because that's been the greater game from the beginning.


End file.
